The Jiaqing
Emperor’s Magnificent Record of the
Western Tour

Abstract: The Qing
Jiaqing emperor’s Magnificent Record of the Western Tour (Xixun shengdian), published in 1812,
is the last “magnificent record” of the Qing dynasty and the only one that focuses on the Buddhist sites
of Wutai Shan. Jiaqing’s record reproduces imperial
inscriptions and poetry on Wutai
Shan, as well as maps, and pictures of the site based on the Qianlong-era Qingliang shan shengdian. The Magnficent Record falls squarely into a Chinese
genre of official site-specific gazetteers, conveying little sense of the Tibetan and
Mongolian presence at Wutai Shan
in the early nineteenth century. The site with its temples and vision-inducing
topographical features is presented as a Chinese mountain retreat befitting a
scholarly gentleman rather than as a sacred site that attracted pilgrims from the
entire northern Asian Buddhist world.

Introduction

The Jiaqing emperor (r. 1795-1820), who made his first and only trip
to Wutai Shan in 1811, left behind
a substantial illustrated description of his visit, the Magnificent Record of the Western Tour (Xixun shengdian).1 Completed in 1812, the Magnificent Record of the Western Tour was the last magnificent record
ever produced by the Qing
court and its exalted title suggests a desire on the emperor’s part to have his tour
of the holy mountains remembered as a mark of imperial favor, within the tradition of
the many tours of the empire undertaken by his great-grandfather and father, the
Kangxi and Qianlong emperors.2 The truth of the
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matter was somewhat different, however, because Jiaqing traveled in an atmosphere of
self-imposed economic austerity and under the cloud of escalating moral criticism,
ironically built on Qianlong’s late
remorse at what he saw as his own wastefully extravagant touring. Countering a raging
debate about touring, the imperial preface to the Magnificent Record of the Western Tour rationalizes the
trip as a way to bring blessings to the people via the benevolent actions of
Wutai Shan’s resident
bodhisattva Mañjuśrī and thus creatively picks up the triumphalist tone of earlier
Qing imperial tours. It
frames Jiaqing’s tour as a gracious
act complete with temple renovations, awards to new examinees, substantial tax
remissions, and serious military business, but it also presents the publication of
his Magnificent Record as a
filial gesture, rather than as an effort at self-promotion.

Jiaqing’s Magnificent Record also implicitly rejects the
growing critique in Qing
officialdom of touring as wasteful and frivolous by presenting the western tour as a
sober journey strongly tied to his ritual obligations to the Manchu dynastic lineage.
The tour’s main destination was Wutai
Shan, but its first stop was Western Tumuli (Xiling), established as the site of the Yongzheng emperor’s tomb, eventually the site of Jiaqing’s own burial, and where his first
empress was already interred. The itinerary of Jiaqing’s western tour thus opens several avenues for inquiry, among
them why he undertook the trip, what it meant to him and his political ambitions, and
why he chose to memorialize it in a “Magnificent Record.”

As the last grand imperial tour, with the longest duration of any, Jiaqing’s visit to Wutai Shan, which was years in the
planning, should be seen as a valiant tour de force against the backdrop of the fragmenting empire he finally inherited
after hovering on the sidelines while his father reigned on as super-emperor. But it
must also be understood in much more conservative terms, specifically in the context
of the inevitable unfolding of the imperial spectacle of reverence to the dynastic
lineage that continued after Qianlong’s death on February 7, 1799 (just two days after the lunar
New Year). It may well be significant that the western tour was scheduled to take
place immediately after the completion of a twelve-year calendrical cycle following
his father’s death. Immediately before the tour began, a series of sacrifices were
carried out at all the imperial tombs, including at Qianlong’s Yuling, which was part of Eastern Tumuli (Dongling).3 Homage to Qianlong does not
seem to have been emphasized in this round of sacrifices. However, Jiaqing’s departure for Wutai Shan was colored by another sad
incident when, on April 4, his third daughter, Princess Zhuangjing Heshi, unexpectedly died. She was the daughter of
the Concubine Heyu and the wife of
the Mongol
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Korchin prince, Suote Namu Duobuji. On April 6, amid last-minute
preparations for the western tour, the emperor visited her new tomb in Beijing.4

Just four days later the tour set out, as the emperor headed southwest from the
Yuanming Yuan to make an
initial stop at Western Tumuli, a
stage of the journey that was 221 li in length (about
seventy-plus miles) and lasted four days. There, on April 14, Jiaqing visited Tailing, where Yongzheng was buried, and made a wine
offering at Changling, where his
first empress-consort, Xiaohe Rui,
had been laid to rest five years after her untimely death in 1797. (Changling, which would be Jiaqing’s burial site, was begun in 1795
and completed in 1802.) Arriving at Wutai
Shan on April 24, the emperor, who had made generous gestures to the
people at every station along the way, issued an order remitting taxes across the
whole of Shanxi, announced the
names of a number of newly elevated men
(juren), and, on May 2, called for the
production of a Magnificent Record that would not only detail his own trip but would
simultaneously memorialize the many tours of the west undertaken by his father, the
Qianlong emperor, his
great-grandfather, the Kangxi
emperor, and his great great-grandfather, the Shunzhi emperor.

In recognition of Mañjuśrī’s blessings to the people and his importance to the Manchu
dynastic lineage and its Inner Asian constituents, three earlier Qing emperors journeyed to Wutai Shan from the capital (Shunzhi twice, Kangxi three times, and Qianlong six times) but none of them produced a “Magnificent
Record” of their western tours, nor, for that matter, of their eastern tours to the
ancestral capital at Shengjing,
or of the very regular northern tours Kangxi and Qianlong
took to the summer retreat at Chengde. This is in sharp contrast to the sumptuous cataloging of
Kangxi’s and Qianlong’s southern tours in Picture of the Southern Tour
(Nanxun tu) and, in
Qianlong’s case, in an
exquisitely printed set of illustrated volumes, Magnificent Record of the Southern Tour (Nanxun shengdian, completed in
1771), which was the clear precedent for Jiaqing’s project.5 By his own words, Jiaqing’s
Magnificent Record of the Western
Tour was intended to fill a significant gap in the historical record by
detailing every instance of Qing imperial generosity at Wutai
Shan (a task already substantially accomplished in 1786 by Qianlong’s explicitly self-promoting Imperially Commissioned Gazetteer of the
Clear and Cool Mountains [Qinding Qingliang shan zhi], a magnificent record [shengdian]
in all but name), but, more pointedly, by republishing in text and image the traces
of Qing imperial progress
towards it and across it, all of which closely mimicked
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his
father’s and great-grandfather’s earlier tours.6 What the book depicts is a very particular aspect of a complex mountain site
that was replete with famous monks, supernatural events, and extraordinary temples
and images subsidized by eminent patrons. It embeds the place and its long history of
marvels, devotional practice, scholarship, art, and architecture in a text that
focuses on repeated signs of Qing presence, blending the forms and descriptive style of Qianlong’s Magnificent Record of the Southern Tour and Imperially Commissioned Gazetteer of the
Clear and Cool Mountains. It also extends and redirects the concept of the
celebratory record of imperial favor from the south, where Qianlong had bestowed it, to the west, where he had traveled
as many times but where he had chosen instead to act out other, often specifically
Buddhist, aspects of his multifaceted imperial persona. From the perspective of the
history of art, what the Magnificent
Record of the Western Tour tells us is that there was a set way to depict
a place (established in Qianlong’s
gazetteer), which intersected with a set way to depict a specific kind of event, in
this case, an imperial tour (the single earlier relevant example of which was
Qianlong’s Magnificent Record of the Southern Tour).

[1]
I would like to extend thanks to the organizers and
participants in the Wutai
Shan Conference, held May 12-13, 2007, at the Rubin Museum of
Art, New York, for their very helpful suggestions, as well as for their
stimulating papers on the later history of Wutai Shan.

[2] Peng Ling, Dong Gao, et al., eds., Xixun shengdian [Magnificent Record of the Western
Tour] (Beijing: Wuying
Dian, 1812); reprint (Beijing: Guji chubanshe, 1996), 3 volumes.
See Natalie Köhle, “Why Did the Kangxi Emperor Go to Wutai Shan? Patronage,
Pilgrimage, and the Place of Tibetan Buddhism at the Early Qing Court,” Late Imperial China 29.1 (2008): 73-119, on the Kangxi emperor’s tours to Wutai Shan and the broad patronage
he distributed while there.

[4]
Princess Zhuangjing
Heshi’s burial and that of her half-sister, Princess Zhuangjing Gulun, who died just two
months later, were located in 1965 in a walled garden enclave just off
Chang’an Dajie in what is now downtown
Beijing during excavations conducted by the Chinese Hydrology Research
Institute. See Zhongguo Shui ke yuan [The
Chinese Hydrology Research Institute], “Gong zhu fen an sang di shi na wei gong zhu?”
[Which Princess is Buried in the Princess’ Grave?], http://dhr.iwhr.com/dhr/B20070105.htm.